In the run-up to the centenary of the October Revolution in Russia, talks and seminars have been arranged and new books and articles have been published. Some of this work has been done to uphold old orthodoxies, but there has also been more critical work looking at the Russian Revolution in the wider context of the 1916-21/3 International Revolutionary Wave to see if there were aspects of this period that have been neglected, which could inform today’s struggles. One of these works is the article written by Eric Blanc and published in Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal. Eric is an activist and historian in Oakland, California.

As one reviewer of this article John Riddell explains, this article “obliges us to rethink many long-held assumptions about the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, as well as the development of Marxist approaches to national liberation, peasant struggle, permanent revolution, and the emancipation of women.”

NATIONAL LIBERATION AND BOLSHEVISM RECONSIDERED – A VIEW FROM THE BORDERLANDS

Helsinki, Finland during the 1905 Revolution

The following paper analyzes the socialist debates on the national question up through 1914. I argue that an effective strategy of anti-colonial Marxism was first put forward by the borderland socialists, not the Bolsheviks. Lenin and his comrades lagged behind the non-Russian Marxists on this crucial issue well into the Civil War—and this political weakness helps explain the Bolshevik failure to build roots among dominated peoples. Consequently, the Bolsheviks were either too numerically weak and/or indifferent to national aspirations to successfully lead socialist revolutions in the borderlands, facilitating the isolation of the Russian workers’ government and the subsequent rise of Stalinism. Continue reading “NATIONAL LIBERATION AND BOLSHEVISM RECONSIDERED – A VIEW FROM THE BORDERLANDS”